Starring Jay as Snorri, Andy as Muaphet Ram, and Kody as Manyara.

Your usual pulp story of heroes robbing a forbidden temple, heroes getting poisoned and left to die in a giant spider web while eunuchs pound drums ("This brings back memories," said Snorri to Muaphet), heroes dying on purpose so they can inhabit and control the body of said spider, heroes realizing they're old friends with eunuchs and harem ladies only to watch them die and be haunted by them, heroes tricking two-headed dogs into breaking the gate to the sewers only to slip in the muck and get washed away, heroes refusing to learn that you should not boast, claiming they'll rescue their comrades, and, by god, doing it this time, a story of heroes who have passed through the other side almost turning to evil but then changing their minds and looking forward.

I still don't know why the old head of the temple let them go, and still don't know how Muaphet Ram recovered the from spider venom and arterial gushing, but perhaps those are questions best left unanswered.

Snorri may never learn that you should never boast, but Manyara did learn that sometimes, you *can* be too awesome.

Interesting, that reincorporation of the temple priest's lantern at the end there. Not one of our motifs - the game didn't deliver that, Kody did.

"Jeez, you die a bit and you get all grumpy about it." - Snorri to Muaphet Ram

Tell us about the system, Jamie. Did it work? Did it help play? All that jazz.

From an old G+ post the first time I played:

There's so much stuff to love in SWM.

Rolling for tone - you roll two different dice and which die is higher determines your tone: "jovial" or "glum" - which was a bit confusing this time, because 'jovial' sounds like 'win' and 'glum' sounds like 'lose', but you can have a glum victory and a jovial defeat. ANYHOW, just that one bit totally informs my narration. "So, you're in a swamp - Oh, it's jovial? Okay, it's more of a fen, and the sun is coming up, and you hear music from the city walls..."

As you go you create morals, mysteries, and motifs which you then reincorporate some of in the endgame.
This didn't quite work for us as well as it did my previous time - the heroes learning their lessons felt a bit forced. We did a bunch of non rules-mandated reincorporation

The motifs thing: when somebody says something cool you write it down (and maybe echo or reincorporate it later) - just being recognized is awesome, like getting fan mail or having a quote board or somebody live tweeting your game. Having the mechanics make them echo is gravy.

There's three different phases and they all work. Unlike certain games where the action phase rocks and then there's a not-so-rocking investigation phase, the 'perilous' phase is rocking action; the 'discovery' phase goes really quick and sharp and lets the players rapidly flesh out the world; and the 'rogue' phase lets everyone endow the other rogues with traits they may or may not like. "Show me how you turn to the dark side" I said of Andy - which he was stoked to do - but then he rolled a tie which means he didn't. Which I thought was pretty neat though he may have felt stepped on - it was like he was *so* close to turning evil, but stepped back from the brink at the last moment.

The first time I played I felt overly constrained as a GM, like with psi run. This time I didn't feel that way at all - I may have gotten too much spotlight time.

The one set of dice acts like a conch or spotlight - the person with the dice has narration rights.

It's fully pulpy - really only good for Conan / Fafhrd type stories - and it comes out for me about 6 or 7 on a 1-10 gonzo scale with 10 being Danger Patrol and 1 being Penny.

It's an interesting game.

I felt like we (the Rogues) often rushed to the dice instead of reveling in the struggling/slipping free narration. Which mostly meant that we missed out on some of the character interaction that is such a big part of the source material.

The dice mechanics are interesting, squeezing a lot of result categories out of 2d6. Most of the time, no matter what you roll you can narrate whatever you want, but some combinations spawn "mysteries" (tidbits of the supernatural, R. E. Howard style) and others spawn "morals" (lessons that one might learn from the situation at hand).

Our group did have a little trouble grasping the jovial vs. glum mechanic. From what Jamie read off to us, it sounded like it is supposed to represent tone, more like boisterous vs. introspective, but at times it was interpreted more as "good for the situation at hand" vs. "bad for the situation at hand". Either way, it felt to me like the mood changed a bit too often.

When we started, I was feeling like I wasn't really going to like it. It's basically freeform, and I prefer a bit more structure. But as things moved forward and I started to grok the way the dice really work, it grew on me a bit. Things I'm on the lookout for the next time I play are: How does it work to flesh out the story with more struggling/slipping narration? Can the group mindfully pace the story so that some of the big questions raised get answered? How do less overt scenes work out (I really wanted us to be drinking in an inn at some point, but we ended just before that would have happened)?